Hans Jonas's Responsibility Ethics Research

The indefinite development of science and technology has led the severedeterioration of human environment and therefore threatened his existence since themidst of the 20th century. This makes a number of thinkers reflect on science andtechnology and explore new approaches to civilization, of whom Hans Jonas is suchone. Jonas devotes us the ethics of responsibility which makes the existence of humanbeing the first imperative caused by the altered nature of human action. The actionmakes science and technology changing with each passing day while technologicalprogress has made man in possession of the capacity to destroy himself and the wholeearth. So he adds ethics new dimensions which have never been considered beforeand are to be responsible for the future of human being and nature. To answer nihilists'"Why should we be responsible for the descendants who havenothing with us?", Jonas grounds the ethics of responsibility on teleology andaxiology. He thinks the world comprises artificial things, subjective beings and naturalones of no subjectivity. Purposes of artificial things belong to men in essence; those ofsubjective beings to organisms themselves; the integrality of natural beings is as wellcalled preconscious nature that has also purposes, which are represented by subjectivebeings. So Nature is a being of purposiveness. Purpose always aims at things its subject desires and this inherently shows suchthings are good or valuable for him. Then when the subject regards himself as his ownend, that means he himself is what he desires and so subjectivity, purpose and valuemelt into one. From this thereby, one who has purpose just has value. Both man andnature have end-in-itself, so they have value too, what's more objective and inherentone which intrinsically has claims of "ought"to man, who's the highest result andwatcher of nature to assume responsibility for its subjects. To realize the new ethics, Jonas proposes "the heuristics of fear", which means topredict doom in prevalence, therefore make man have consciousness of fear andinspire him to correct his own errors so as to lessen the possible disaster. Jonasopposes all types of fanatical purposive behaviors and man's being put at stake forso-called utopia and therefore proposes abstinence, caution, modesty and so on shouldbe the core of the ethics of responsibility. This paper tries to introduce Jonas's ethics thoroughly and comprehensivelyincluding seven chapters. The introduction expounds its background of the day andmaim content. The first chapter introduces Jonas's life and his scholastic experienceand analyses the inner connection of his three stages of scholarism. The secondparticipates in studying the necessity of the ethics of responsibility and answers whysuch an ethics is needed. The third elaborates its theoretical system and points out itmainly comprises knowledge of principles, prognosis and practice. The fourth oneresolves the question why we ought to be responsible for our descendants and nature,that's to say, gives the ethics ontological proof. The fifth chapter discusses the way tofulfill the ethics of responsibility, emphasizing Jonas's critique of Marxian utopia. Thesixth introduces the critique and valuation to Jonas's thought and points out hiscontributions and shortcomings in his theory and its practice. The last chaptercompares the ethics of responsibility, discourse ethics and Chinese classical ethicalthought and introduces Ervin Laszlo's practice on the ethics of responsibility so as tocomplement Jonas's deficiencies.